Reluctant Allies: China and North Korea

As North Korea edges closer and closer to being able to launch a nuclear weapon across the Pacific, US President Donald Trump is demanding China step up and put pressure on Pyongyang to stop its weapons program. But just how much influence does China have on the North Korean leadership? Would the kind of economic pressure President Trump wants China to apply lead to North Korea’s collapse, and what might that mean for China?

Transcript

Journalist [archival]: It's the moment the world feared, North Korea announcing it has successfully fired an intercontinental ballistic missile. But this, the 13th launch of the year, is different, because Kim Jong-un now looks like he has a missile capable of reaching all the way across the Pacific.

Journalist [archival]: The US President Donald Trump responded today on Twitter, suggesting it was time for China to make a heavy move against North Korea.

Annabelle Quince: As North Korea edges closer and closer to launching a nuclear weapon across the Pacific, US President Donald Trump is demanding that China steps up and pressure Pyongyang to stop its weapons program.

Hello, this is Rear Vision on RN, I'm Annabelle Quince.

China is North Korea's closest ally and its major trading partner, but just how much influence does China have on the North Korean leadership? Could the kind of economic pressure President Trump wants China to apply actually lead to the collapse of the North Korean regime, and what might that mean for China?

Historically, China and the Korean peninsula have had extremely close political, cultural, and military ties. Chung Min Lee is Professor of International Relations at Yonsei University in Seoul.

Chung Min Lee: You're absolutely right, going back to the Tang dynasty we've had a relationship with all Chinese dynasties, and for a long time, for the last I would say 1,000 years or so we were a so-called tributary states to China. And although Vietnam was colonised 1,000 years by the Chinese, we remained an independent state but, as I said, culturally, politically, economically, psychologically, almost at all levels we've had the tightest relations with China.

And if you look at how the Chinese worldview was, you had the Middle Kingdom at the apex of the Chinese world order, and then you had so-called peripheral states. But of the peripheral states, Vietnam to the south but particularly Korea was considered to be one of the most I guess likely Chinese states in the sense that we adopted Confucianism, we got Chinese characters from them. And so the closeness was at all levels of society, and therefore amongst all of the so-called outsider barbarian states, the Chinese considered us to be the closest to them. That's why they maintain, despite the fact that we were under their pressure for a long time, that is one main reason why Korea has had such a long tie with China.

James Reilly: It was extremely close ties between traditional empirical China and Korea. The Chinese dynasties at various points saw Korea is a kind of protectorate in a way, so they wanted to provide a series of guarantees essentially for Korean security, and in exchange for that had a great deal of influence over the palace politics in Korea.

Annabelle Quince: James Reilly is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney in the department of government and international relations.

James Reilly: It was a tributary relationship where Korean authorities, officials, imperial figures would have to come to Beijing to offer fealty. There would be a sort of annual exchange of gifts to the Chinese emperor as part of this tributary relationship, and in exchange China provided military protection and allowed some border trade to trade back and forth with the Korean people. So it was a deep economic, cultural and political relationship going back to Ming and Qing China primarily.

Annabelle Quince: So when we move into the 20th century you start to see another power arising in Asia, which of course was Japan. And in a sense China and Korea shared that antipathy towards Japan. I'm wondering if that also brought you closer.

Chung Min Lee: Kind of, but in a different way. In 1910, Korea was officially annexed and colonised by Japan. It was a brutal occupation for 36 years. The Japanese invaded China much earlier, and so the Chinese also harboured very anti-Japanese feelings, and for a long time they did occupy certain parts of China. So yes, the Japan factor does unite Korea, but the fact remains that since 1949 when the PRC was formed and the peninsula was divided into North and South Korea, the democratic south has had much closer ties with Japan than North Korea.

South Koreanjournalist [archival]: On Sunday, June 25, 1950, the Communists launched an attack across the 38th parallel in a treacherous attempt to destroy the Republic of Korea.

James Reilly: This is a crucial moment really in the modern history of the People's Republic of China, the history around the Korean War. So of course in 1945 the Japanese are defeated at the end of World War II, and surrender on the peninsula, the question of who was going to accept the Japanese surrender was their first great challenge. China was of course a victor on the side of the United States in World War II, and the major concern was really between the Soviets and the Americans, and essentially was two American military planners in a basement of a building in Washington which sent a telegram to Stalin saying that they could divide the peninsula roughly at the 38th parallel, that the Americans would accept the surrender of the Japanese south of the 38th parallel and the Soviets would accept it north. And that really is the origins ultimately of the split in the Korean peninsula. Korea had never been divided before in its history until that moment.

And so it was divisions in the earlier stages of the Cold War on the Korean peninsula between the US and Soviets that ultimately led to 2 different Koreas being set up on the peninsular in 1948, both the Republic of Korea and the Democratic Republic of Korea are declared. North Korea, the Democratic People's Republic, under Soviet protection, so it was really the Soviets more than the Chinese that were the most important force in the early stage of the Democratic People's Republic, in sort of separating that.

But there had been this very close and very long relationship between the Chinese military forces, the People's Liberation Army in China, and Korean fighters. So Kim Il-sun, under the Japanese colonial occupation was chased out of Korea itself and fought with the People's Liberation Army against Japanese forces in China itself. So he had very close cooperation, there were tens of thousands of Korean guerrilla fighters which fought with China, supported the Chinese communists throughout the fight against the Japanese and, upon victory in 1945, continued, some of them, to support the Chinese communist party in the civil war. So there was this very close military relationship with the Chinese military, even though the Soviets were really the dominant political power.

South KoreanJournalist [archival]: Today, June 25, 1960, I am proud to call the roll of honour of those nations which participated in the war against the Communist aggression here in Korea: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, England, Poland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Philippines, the United States.

James Reilly: It was really a Stalin brokered deal where Stalin agreed to offer support to China. So Stalin said that he would not provide any Soviet forces directly but would arm and aid Chinese and North Korean forces if they were forced to fight in the Korean peninsula. China initially of course declined to get involved in the war when the war started in 1950, and so China stayed out of the war.

And it was only as the US and South Korean forces were marching up towards the Chinese peninsula, three months into the war, and they got close enough, Mao Zedong finally decided, after warning the Americans to stop, and Zhou Enlai sent a very famous telegram that the United States basically dismissed, that finally Mao decided, in famous words, to cross the Yalu River, to send Chinese volunteer forces south into the Korean peninsula to join the fight. And in this he was both encouraged and supported by Stalin and by the Soviet Union indirectly. So it is really this combination of Soviet support, geopolitical anxiety and I think a strong sense of military comradeship built on decades of really fighting together.

Xiao Ren: Yes, that's true, because those were the Cold War years and China and the US where enemies.

Annabelle Quince: Xiao Ren, professor and director of the Center for the Study of Chinese Foreign Policy at Fudan University, Shanghai.

Xiao Ren: There were two camps, socialist camp, capitalist camp, one led by the Soviet Union, one led by the United States. So that was not surprising, that China made that decision and sent troops to Korea and fought the US.

Chung Min Lee: At that time, China was just one-year-old, and so the state, although she was basically unified by Moa Zedong, was still walking on eggshells, and they were concerned about a revival of the civil war. So Mao was very, very cautious because he felt that if the Americans unified the entire Korean peninsula, then they would be facing American forces right along the Sino Korean border which was something that he did not want to do. So that's why he basically intervened with millions of Chinese, so-called People's Volunteers.

Dwight Eisenhower [archival]: Tonight we greet with prayers of thanksgiving the official news that an armistice was signed almost an hour ago in Korea. And so at long last the carnage of war is to cease and the negotiations of the conference table is to begin. We have won an armistice on a single battleground, not peace in the world.

James Reilly: There was certainly a tremendous sense on the part of the Chinese, this was a great test, the Chinese People's Republic you have to remember in 1953 was still extremely new, was surrounded and being faced by a very pervasive global embargo led by the United States, very weak. Decades of war and civil unrest and difficulty within the country had left China impoverished. So the ability to fight off the Americans…the slogan in in China was to save Korea and resist America. So it was very much a moment of great pride I think for Chinese leadership and for many Chinese people.

Annabelle Quince: What about in the post-war years? How much support did North Korea economically and perhaps even politically get from China?

Chung Min Lee: Well, at that time not all that much because China from the 1950s until the 1970s was engulfed by first the Great Leap Forward, which was a massive disaster economically, with millions dying in famine. And then you had 10-years-plus of political chaos driven by the Cultural Revolution. So the North Koreans actually did economically fairly well. Unbelievably until 1970, North Korea had a higher GDP than South Korea. Can you believe that? And then it was the Soviets who gave the North Koreans lots of economic aid and military assistance. Since reforms began in '78 in China, things have turned around, and North Korea is 100% dependent upon China for oil, food supplies and other consumer goods.

Annabelle Quince: What about politically, was there a lot of political back and forth between the North Korean leadership and the Chinese leadership?

James Reilly: Well they certainly interacted very closely, and the traditional Chinese phrase is they are as close as lips and teeth. So the North Koreans and the Chinese leadership would be back and forth a lot. There was a great deal of interaction between the two militaries for the earlier periods of the country, and either political leadership was quite close, there was sort of a back and forth of party leaders for the most part along with two lines of party to party ties were extremely close between the Korean workers party and the Chinese communist party.

So there was a good deal of political interactions, of economic support on the part of the Chinese, but it doesn't mean that there was a high level of trust. I think particularly on the part of North Korea, being a small country next to a very large and powerful neighbour became a situation that they were always concerned about and increasingly so as China began to become more wealthy while North Korea's economy started to slip further behind by the 1980s. North Koreans' anxiety and really concern with being overly dependent on China really came to the fore.

When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended, North Korea lost one of its main allies, Russia. But on top of that, both Russia and China established diplomatic relations with South Korea.

Chung Min Lee: The North Koreans got extremely upset when the Soviets under Gorbachev made official ties with South Korea, and when China also recognised South Korea, the North Koreans became very illiterate. The key driver here has been economic, as I said. North Korea's trade with China per year is about $5 billion. South Korea's entire trade, both exports and imports worldwide is about $1 trillion. So the Chinese have a much more deeper and mutually compatible economic relationship with the South Koreans, but they have much stronger political ties with North Korea, notwithstanding that Kim Jong-un has not visited Beijing.

From China's perspective, they want to really influence South Korea's ties with Washington, and what they really want to do is pry South Korea away from the alliance with Washington although as you know with Australia and Japan, we three countries are the strongest allies of the Americans, so from a Chinese perspective you want a North Korean buffer zone that basically means that the South Koreans, the Japanese and the Americans are constrained, so that works in China's favour. But as long as China continues to coddle North Korea, she comes under international pressure because everybody says how can you support the world's last totalitarian state with a growing nuclear threat?

Journalist [archival]: North Korea announced its nuclear test, and seismic laboratories all over the world started picking it up earlier today.

Journalist [archival]: Their official line was that this was an historic event for North Korea, that the state scientists had carried out a safe and successful nuclear test.

Chung Min Lee: Initially when the North Koreans began their nuclear weapons program back in the '70s, they got their initial technology from the Russians or the Soviets but much of it from the Chinese. And just like the Chinese who supported the nuclear program in Pakistan, what happened was there was this triangle. The Chinese gave nuclear technologies to the Pakistani's and a little bit to North Korea. North Korea developed, for example, missiles, which the Pakistani's did not have. And so in exchange for North Korean missile technologies to Pakistan, Pakistan offered North Korea its nuclear technology. So this was a triangular relationship that resulted in a nuclearised Pakistan and now a growing nuclearised North Korea.

Xiao Ren: China and North Korea were allies during the Cold War years, but they are just nominal allies today. The difficulty is the nuclear program is in the hand of the North Koreans, it's their program, it's not our program. So we are not in a position to decide whether to develop or abandon, it's not China's decision, it's North Korea's decision, and it's their program. And the reason I think they feel threatened by the United States, they see the United States holds a hostile policy towards them and that's their biggest security concern. I believe that has been their most important reason for them to develop nuclear weapons.

James Reilly: China's official position and indeed what their actual interests are I believe, is to oppose North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Chinese government is deeply concerned with the idea of reintroducing nuclear weapons onto the Korean peninsula. South Korea has so far foregone the pursuit of nuclear weapons, Japan does not have nuclear weapons, and the Chinese I think have a great deal of concern that if North Korea was to develop a demonstrative nuclear weapons capacity, this could lead to an escalation of nuclear weapons interest across North East Asia, something which would have very detrimental impacts on China's own national security.

So the Chinese have their own interest to oppose North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons, and indeed they've always said that and they signed onto every UN resolution that ultimately has been passed of course in the UN Security Council, opposing North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Journalist [archival]: US President Bill Clinton says sanctions against North Korea must be pursued in the light of the growing international uncertainty over its suspected nuclear weapons program. The international atomic energy agency today reported that the North Koreans had reached the point of no return in their refuelling program.

James Reilly: And I think that for most part of what China has adopted in response to North Korea has been a sort of twofold approach. So on the one hand China agrees with and to some degree certainly has implemented sanctions aimed at limiting material support for North Korea's nuclear weapons program and indeed discouraging North Korea from pursuing that. So this is primarily any kind of sanctions that are aimed at supporting the materials, the individuals or the capacity of North Korea to pursue nuclear weapons. And those for the most part I think have been reasonably implemented by China.

What China has resisted and really has come into struggle with the United States in particular, has been efforts to spread those sanctions into what the Chinese call normal commercial interactions. So in almost every one of the UN Security Council resolutions that have been passed against North Korea's nuclear weapons program, China has insisted on a clause in there, 'except for normal commercial interactions'. So the Chinese think that actually it's quite legitimate to continue these regular trading relations, and indeed they've tried to sort of hide or protect those off from the UN Security Council resolutions.

Xiao Ren: For many years we tried to persuade the North Koreans by saying to them that, well, developing a nuclear program may not be in your best interest. Your best interest is to reform and open up your society and so forth. We tried very hard to persuade them. And we tried to bring their people, North Korean officials to China for study tours, for workshops and so forth.

And the late Kim Jong-un paid five visits to China during his final years. I believe he was impressed by our achievements. But for the North Koreans the top priority has been regime survival. So they've been very careful not to let the measures affect regime survival. To some extent it is understandable. Anyway, we tried very hard. But eventually it's up to North Korea to decide what to do.

Chung Min Lee: China has followed most of the UN sanctions. But on the other hand, there were so many Chinese companies that do business with North Korea, that those companies are not really checked by the Chinese. If the Trump administration goes through with secondary sanctions or sanctioning those companies that do business with North Korea, whether its banks or avionics companies or whatever, then there will be real trouble because Chinese companies or the Chinese government will retaliate if the Americans pursue secondary sanctions. But that's the only way you going to really draw the Chinese to pressure North Korea to stop developing nuclear weapons. By some estimates, they have today about 15 to 20 nuclear warheads. The Americans are very concerned that the North Koreans have developed ICBM capabilities, or intercontinental ballistic missiles, and they are also capable of miniaturising warheads, and that is an existential threat to the Americans as much as it is to the South Koreans and Japanese.

James Reilly: Well, there's almost no military assistance that China provides to North Korea. I think almost nobody would suggest China openly provides military aid to North Korea directly. Militarily North Korea is pursuing its weapons programs pretty much on its own. Economically it's a very different story. North Korea's foreign trade with China, about 90% of that, all its foreign trade goes with China. So North Korea is extremely dependent upon China for its foreign economic trade certainly and in levels of investment.

There's been some indicators that there's been a lot of cut in Chinese purchases of North Korean coal. It is unclear how much fuel oil goes from China to North Korea, but certainly key elements of the North Korean economy are still very much dependent upon being able to trade with China. So that would be the one thing that the US really wants to cut off, the Chinese trade and in particular North Koreans access to China's financial system is something that the Americans are very interested in pressuring Beijing to give up. But I think it's very unlikely for China to follow that.

Annabelle Quince: I suppose the problem for China is that…or its fear must be that if it imposes really strict sanctions like the Americans would like, there is the potential that North Korea could collapse.

Chung Min Lee: That's right. But I would argue that if there is a regime collapse, it will come from internal contradictions. North Korea is a combination of a dynasty, a socialist state and particularly a Mafia regime. It is a regime that is built on the mythology of the Kim dynasty. And the top 1% from the party and the army and the intelligence agencies leave a fairly good life because they owe their whole lives to the Kim dynasty. But the rest of the population are living in poverty, and you recall that in the early 1990s, 1.5 to 1.8 North Koreans died of famine, and Kim Jong-il, the then leader, was having Italian chefs and his own personal Japanese chef going to Japan to buy the freshest fish for his sushi. So this is a regime that is completely divorced from the welfare of its people.

James Reilly: US policy I think for decades has been partially based upon this hope that the collapse of North Korea is just around the corner. We've had endless rounds of secret and later revealed CIA estimates that North Korea is about to collapse, and repeated predictions of that. Each time we get a new leader in North Korea, again US experts come out to tell us they cannot possibly survive in the transition. In fact South Korea survived its last leadership transition much more impressive, came through it much more stably than almost all the external US experts would have predicted.

So North Korea I think is in a very interesting place today. We are seeing on the ground very significant types of economic changes. Some of the structure of the agricultural sector and organisation of farms is really in some ways mirroring the Chinese process of moving towards smaller family farms, allowing farmers to sell their products outside of the state procurement system into these private markets. We are seeing a greater flow of labour, of capital, of goods around the country, and indeed a deepening interest in foreign trade, particularly with China, although the North Koreans would like to reduce their dependence upon China and go more far abroad. So there's a lot of changes happening inside the country economically, and socially I think probably it will make the regime more stable in the short term, not less so.

Xiao Ren: Well yes, that is exactly why China is in a difficult situation. People have been talking about collapse for more than two decades, so we have to be very careful. But let's assume that it's a possibility. If North Korea collapses it would have serious ramifications for China. For example, the flooding of North Korean refugees. And now they have nuclear bombs, they have missiles, they have artillery and so on. So it would be very uncertain and risky if North Korea collapses. So China does not hope to see a collapse of North Korea.

Meanwhile, we do not want to see the further development of the nuclear missile program. So how are we going to do? We have to find a middle way, right? But it's very difficult to balance between the different scenarios. So that's why China is in a very difficult situation.

Chung Min Lee: You know, one of these days the Chinese will come to a crossroad. They will realise that North Korea is not only a strategic liability, it is actually becoming a military threat to them. Remember, the North Koreans are very proud people, and so Kim Jong-un hates the fact that he is so dependent on the Chinese for political and economic ties and as a result if he continues to distance himself from China and says, 'Regardless of what you say, I will continue to make nuclear weapons,' at some point in time the Chinese government has to say, okay, enough is enough. North Korea serves a purpose as a buffer zone, but because the Chinese economy is growing so much, that buffer zone is not as important as it was 30 or 40 years ago. So despite the fact that China and North Korea remain very close, I would argue that within the next five years the Chinese will have to make a critical decision.

Journalist [archival]: The US president Donald Trump responded today on Twitter, suggesting it was time for China to make a heavy move against North Korea and end the nonsense once and for all.

Xiao Ren: What North Korea has been doing has triggered the loss of patience on China's side, and China has taken some significant steps in terms of more seriously implementing Security Council resolutions. One example is in February China announced that we would stop import of coal from North Korea, which was a significant step. China's decision not to import North Korean coal will significantly reduce North Korean export and therefore reduce North Koreans foreign exchange income. And we should allow more time to see what these new sanctions, what impact these new sanctions will have on North Korea.

James Reilly: But I think the Chinese thinking on this, and a lot of Chinese experts on this have really shifted around. I think the consensus might have been five or 10 years ago that this weapons program was for sale, there was some kind of price at which it could be negotiated away. And some of the experts that I talk to are getting more and more pessimistic about that, that in fact for either domestic political legitimation reasons, maybe for serious national security concerns, North Korea is really determined to develop this nuclear weapons capacity and it's getting harder and harder to wean them away from that.

Annabelle Quince: And what do you think China's response would be if there was some kind of US response to North Korea?

James Reilly: If there is a military early strike on the part of the United States, say in Korea or something like that, it's extremely difficult to control the subsequent dynamics, it's very, very worrisome. It's hard to know how China responds to anything like that. And the various game scenarios that they must play out would be terrifying to imagine, the destruction would be horrific. I think one of the real lessons of the Korean War is the importance of clarity and of believing these signals at a very early stage. It needs to be very, very clear on the part of both Beijing and Washington on what their red lines are and what is unacceptable. The US should not be under any illusion about the depth of Chinese concerns on the Korean peninsula.

Annabelle Quince: James Reilly, Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. My other guests: Xiao Ren, professor and director of the Center for the Study of Chinese Foreign Policy at Fudan University, Shanghai; and Chung Min Lee , Professor of International Relations Yonsei University in Seoul.

Credits

Comments (4)

Andy Wang :

09 Jul 2017 12:11:34pm

The Korean war started with North Korea invading South Korea. The US entered the fray and nearly advanced to the Chinese border when China also entered the frY and pushed the US forces nack to the 38th parralel. This was the first cold war conflict since WW2. As the US were pushed back by the Chinese, the US threathened to use nuclear weapons which would have started WW3. This was when China started its own nuclear weapons development. Interesting to read the history books and it seems it has always been the US who have used or threatened nuclear responses to force US opponents to back down. Who is the war mongering nation of the 21st century? Yes, the US and their yes men allies. Can you really blame North Korea for developing their own nuclear weapons development. The US by way of the UN sanctions has essentially choked the life out of the poor North Korean people. China and Russia have been the only nations who have helped the North Korean people. Kim might be a ruthless murdering tyrant, but why must the North Korean people suffer? The only solution is for the US to pull out of Korea and Japan so that the Asean countries can try to resolve the crisis by peaceful means. Any US intervention will only stoke the fires.

Chris :

14 Jul 2017 3:01:00pm

"it seems it has always been the US who have used or threatened nuclear responses to force US opponents to back down."That's kinda the point of nuclear weapons, no? I doubt the US would get the UK or another nuclear power to push back US opponents (esp. given that Israel doesn't admit to being nuclear-armed).Let's not forget Pakistani and Indian sabre-rattling, and what happens between others in private.

"Yes, the US and their yes men allies." The Saudis are more than "yes men", and the Chinese are only just getting started in 21C.

"Can you really blame North Korea for developing their own nuclear weapons development."No, but they can take full blame for idiocy of meglomaniacally threatening the US with WMDs. That's how you turn your fears into self-fulfulling prophecy.

"The US by way of the UN sanctions has essentially choked the life out of the poor North Korean people."The Kim regime was doing that to control the people even before famine or sanctions.

"China and Russia have been the only nations who have helped the North Korean people." You're ignoring help from South Korea, even if you call enabling the Kim dynasty to actually "have helped the North Korean people."

"Kim might be a ruthless murdering tyrant, but why must the North Korean people suffer?" Because their govt oppresses them with police state and concentration camps as elite parties on and builds expensive weaponry, since unaccountable to people and self-interested.

"The only solution is for the US to pull out of Korea and Japan.."The Chinese would love that! The US (and South Korea) would presumably need a huge deal to leave the penisula, given the North's current military.

"the Asean countries" I assume you meant Asian, as ASEAN (Assoc of _South East_ Asian Nations couldn't and wouldn't get into this unless China really forced them to.

"Any US intervention will only stoke the fires."You're ignoring that it's North Korea that's dragging the US into this. I don't think the US'll back down without agreeable terms.Let's hope karma sees an ICBM blow up in take-off and take out Kim and his flunkies. Or he gets to try some of that stuff used in Malaysian airport. Then maybe deals can be done and some of the yoke revealed and lifted from people.

Chris :

14 Jul 2017 4:09:55pm

Thanks for the interesting perspectives. It's also quite interesting that this program considered medieval Sino-Korean relations, but didn't discuss the 1994 US-North Korean Agreed Framework (e.g. www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/agreedframework, pri.org/stories/2015-07-21/iran-nuclear-deal-has-north-korea-written-all-over-it).Hope this doesn't mean we're being prepped/propped up for another war, esp considering the carnage all-round.

Dubious that China frets about refugees - it has a large army that could secure that border, since South Korea & West would likely be happy to do food distribution if new NK miltary admin were rid of Kim Jong-Un and threats.

Chris P :

16 Jul 2017 11:11:54am

Interesting senario.

North Korea has now become a military threat. The USA financially does not want to go to war, as it has a huge external debt. The USA will apply pressure on China to influence North Korea. China will not cooperate and the USA will apply sanctions on Chinese companies who trade with North Korea. China will enter into a trade dispute with USA. The USA will then have issues with inflation increasing which could put the USA into a recession. China will have its exports being reduced, thus weakening its currency, causing other countries that trade with China to devalue their own currencies, causing worldwide inflation, causing a worldwide recession. Interesting times ahead.